


All Your Villains: Brock Rumlow

by PumpkinDoodles



Series: All Your Villains [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: All Your Villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 09:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18688378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinDoodles/pseuds/PumpkinDoodles
Summary: The Kid in the Vault





	All Your Villains: Brock Rumlow

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing! I'm sort of working alphabetically, but y'all knew I had to do this one, anyway, right? It's inspired by a post floating around = Frank Grillo supposedly said Rumlow is thinking, "did I choose the right side?" in the vault scene at a fan Q&A.

_Is he on the right side?_ he thinks, when he sees the man in the chair. Not even a man, really. Older than him, of course, but somehow younger, too. Vulnerable-looking. A beautiful kid. But he cannot show pity in front of the chief, so he represses the flinch when Pierce slaps the Asset. The sound of the chair working is worse. _They put the kid’s brain back in the blender_ floats unbidden to his mind, alongside the memory of an almond-yellow and brown blender his parents got as a wedding gift. When they were kids, he wanted to be the one who pushed the little rectangular button whenever his mother made milkshakes. She fussed because she was worried he’d somehow cut himself on the blades one day. Funny that she worried about the blade but never about his father. The blade would fit in the palm of your hand.

 

He looks over his shoulder once at the kid in the chair--but not again--as he follows Pierce out.

 

_Is he on the right side?_

 

All his life, he has craved the winning side. The winning side, he thinks, is always the right side. He hates to lose. He started out as a loser: a small kid, a poor kid, a smartass, a sensitive kid, a kid whose father screamed and slapped. He remembers everything. He talks out of line, someone bigger and meaner is always ready to make him eat his words. In the Bronx, back then, there were a lot of bigger someones. Sometimes, he doesn’t have to talk at all: there are boys willing to knock his books out of his arms or shoulder check him in the hallways just for existing and seeming unlikely to fight back. Pushed into a locker one afternoon, he catches himself walking around with a grinding jaw, hands clenched so his nails dig half-moon circles into the palms, a skinny twelve year old who _just wants to fucking hit someone. Just once._

It’s the wrestling coach who tells him that his size might be an advantage in a system based on classes. The team needs someone light to balance. His tries to hide his eagerness, the gleam in his eyes. But the coach spots it and chuckles. “You wanna join the team, Rumlow?” he asks.

 

He does.

 

The first match goes badly, but he is determined. He learns. He starts learning how to assess his opponents, size them up, anticipate their moves. He wins his next match.

 

_He fucking loves to win._

 

Once he’s learned how to judge his opponents on technical points, his coach nudges him towards psychology. “Get in their heads,” he says. He realizes that he can manipulate his opponents, just by picking at wounds, looking for soft spots. Shit-talking. Being a smartass goes back in his toolkit, now that he can back it up by winning. A whispered insult, a passive-aggressive remark in that split second before contact is sometimes enough to send someone else into a mental tailspin. Wrestling isn’t enough for him, though. He is still hungry, still wants to hit. Maybe he wants to hit more, now that he knows what winning feels like. He carries the toolkit with him when he goes for boxing and martial arts. He is chasing the rush, the fear, channeling his emotions into the moment when it is okay to let the rage out and put himself in range of someone’s hits again, that seesawing edge between giving and receiving pain. When you fight, you have to get close to your opponent to land your own blows.

 

In the military, he learns to use guns. But he still prefers his hands, his body to be the real implements. It ought to be visible enough to someone intuitive who sees him hitting a bag at 5am on three hours of sleep and a glug of black coffee. But most people aren’t intuitive, so his secrets are well-hidden. Ordered, his final mentor might say. That is how Pierce talks him into HYDRA, by appealing to his innate feeling that the world would spin into chaos without discipline, that the powers-that-be are barely holding it together now. “What the world needs is more order, Agent Rumlow,” Pierce tells him. “Will you help me?”

 

He joins the team, gets his promotion.

 

He is two people: the upstanding citizen, the Navy SEAL in his dress uniform, the STRIKE Commander, his social face, the mask firmly on outside the ring, all sly jokes and calm under pressure. He chisels himself down, does the serum trials, brings his body into order, even when it aches. But inside? He is still twelve years old, clenching his fists in frustration until his palms bruise, wanting to hit, to win.

 

_Who is he if he doesn’t win?_

 

He doesn’t want to find out. He leaves the kid in the vault. He chooses order through pain.

 

**Author's Note:**

> 


End file.
